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EVA HOPKINS:

Otherwise, I got good grades in school. I could have gone on to school. My mother wanted me to go on, but I wanted to quit and go to work. We moved right out here on the corner next to the mill. At that time, that mill, it was a beautiful lot out there. It had lillies all out in that, it was real pretty. The mill village looked so much better than it does now. It really wasn't a bad place. Down here in North Charlotte, behind Park Mill there, it was running, and the Johnson Mill was running, and the Mercury Mill. There was stores, there was a dry goods store, there was a beauty shop, there was a watch fixing shop, two shoe shops, two drug stores, two doctors-it was a little town down there. Now everything's dead and gone. It just looks like a ghost town down there now because these mills have all closed down.

LU ANN JONES:

Did each mill have its own villageworkers?

EVA HOPKINS:

Where I live is the Mercury. These are Mercury houses, and from here on down that way, they're Johnson mill houses. Down farther on the other side of North Charlotte where those store buildings are, that's the Highland Park village. Each mill had its own village.

LU ANN JONES:

Did you visit in each other's villages, or was a village off limits?

EVA HOPKINS:

Oh no, no, everybody knew everybody. We'd know people from the Highland Park, but mostly, the Highland Park, I didn't know too many people down there because North Charlotte kind of divided. We call it North Charlotte. All of those stores and drug stores and everything right in the center between the two villages.